The Samsung Galaxy S III has been rooted ahead of launch…sort of. A developer going by the alias of Chainfire has successfully achieved root with the device’s release candidate firmware but never even had GS3 in hand. Instead he took advantage of a leaked software build and did the rooting virtually. The good news is that if Samsung doesn’t make any adjustments to the phone’s kernel rooting will be an easy process once users have the new Galaxy in hand. The whole process required only reloading the kernel with an altered adb binary and then manually installing SuperUser.

Chainfire isn’t making the build he is working with available to the public, and there is still time for Samsung to change things up. For now, it seems like the Korean smartphone maker has decided to forego adding extra hurdles for developers when it comes to rooting the Galaxy S III.